


Origin Stories: Elias Grayson

by Metagenesis



Category: World of Warcraft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:13:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27423274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metagenesis/pseuds/Metagenesis
Summary: Elias Grayson is a physician and widower, native to the human kingdom of Gilneas. His encounter with one of the fearsome Worgen will change his life.





	Origin Stories: Elias Grayson

Elias Grayson quickened his pace, jackboots striking the cobbles at a smart tempo, each step accompanied by the splish-splash of shallow puddles. The sky hung low and gray, a cold drizzle fogging his spectacles while the clouds threatened to release their burden of rain at a moment’s notice – a common clime for Gilneas. But Elias’ umbrella had fallen victim to gusts of wind the night before, and so he endured the wet with hat and coat and tenacity alone – even if it made his spectacles cloud.

He hefted a leathern satchel close to the shelter of his chest, away from the droplets struck from the cobbles. Within were the tools of his trade: tiny phials of serum, needle and waxed thread, forceps and clamps, scalpel and lancets, bandages and gauze, and - yes - even the bonesaw. The incident of his apostasy from the Church was years past, but if his patients minded their wounds closed and ailments cured by the physician’s art rather than prayers, they minded it less than their own suffering.

And there were more wounds to close by the day, thanks to Lord Darius Crowley and his sympathizers. With the worgen curse and its victims snapping at their heels, the people of Gilneas had isolated themselves behind the Greymane Wall. Civil war had erupted quickly as those who opposed Gilneas’ isolation, like Crowley, clashed with the much larger population who feared that, should the Wall fall, their humanity would be lost forever.

The rebel Lord Crowley had finally been taken and imprisoned for treason; the windows lining the lane glowed amber as people toasted to the traitor’s capture. Elias simply marched along, mud and rainwater marring the shine of his tall boots. Perhaps he would enjoy some fortified brandy for the occasion while warming himself before the hearth of his own home. With any luck, his children would already be abed. Light bless and keep them both, but there were times when he missed having a woman around the house.

Not for the first time, Elias considered remarrying, turning the thought over and over in his mind like a well-worn stone. At fifty-something years he was still fit and straight, and taller than most besides. His pale hair was already silvering, but still long and full, kept in a neat gentleman’s queue between his shoulders. With a long, thin nose, serious set to eyes and mouth, and the ever-present wire-rimmed spectacles, he had never considered himself particularly handsome. But he had a trade, and good standing at the exchequer, and he kept his indulgences modest. And surely he could still give a bride a child or two of her own, if she wished for it. Certainly a woman could do much worse than taking the widower Grayson to hand.

Somewhere a dog barked, the sound ricocheting off brick and mortar walls like a bullet. Another joined it; then another, and another, the bellows of mastiffs mingling with the shrill cries of foxhounds and the coarse voices of a dozen mutts. Elias stopped in the middle of the street, in the darkness between greasy lamplights. Slowly he parted his coat to reach beneath where a shoulder holster held a revolver close to his side.

Claws scrabbled against stone in the alley ahead. Elias loosened the gun in its holster – and let out a breath as a rawboned hound limped into the street. It looked at him with whites showing around its eyes before hobbling off as fast as its three good legs could carry it. Elias relaxed his grip on the gun, but only just; the dogs were still baying.

Without quite knowing why – perhaps a prickle of hairs along the nape of his neck, or a peculiar scent to the sodden air – Elias looked up, the least probable direction for danger – and saw a hulking, bristling shape on the rooftops, red eyes gleaming in the dim light from the street below. A long, lupine muzzle, but the broad shoulders of a man and the loping gait of a beast – there was no mistaking the nightmare that had kept the Gilnean nation locked and resolute behind a wall for years, while the world made war without them.

_Worgen._

Still snug in its holster beneath his coat, Elias thumbed back the revolver’s hammer; with the rain and the damp, he might have only one good shot out of six, once he drew it. The worgen’s ferine eyes flickered, its muscles tensing beneath its thick pelt. By the time it flung itself off the rooftop, Elias had drawn his gun and fired.

The worgen reeled in midair, graceful leap turning into an ignoble tumble. It landed in a heap on the cobbles; Elias paced backward, thumbing the hammer again. This time, the worgen was faster. Its hands, eerily man-shaped but for the wicked claws in place of each nail, scrabbled for purchase on the street as it rushed him on all fours. The shot went wide as the worgen crashed into him, sending them both to the ground and driving the wind from his lungs and the spectacles from his face.

Yellowed teeth snapped at the starched points of his high collar and claws raked at his vest. But either the bullet had weakened it or the fall disoriented it enough that the blows tore only cloth. Elias had always been a lean, spare man, and used that to good effect as he twisted and rolled against the assault, then flipped onto his belly and desperately wormed his way out of the cage made by the beast’s limbs.

He’d lost his revolver. Glass crunched beneath him, dimly recognized as phials of precious serum; his bag must have spilled its contents, as well. The gun couldn’t have gone far, and the worgen was already clawing at his ankles. His groping fingers met cool, rain-slicked metal; Elias rolled onto his back and aimed between the beast’s eyes.

The gun gave a sad little _click_ , and the worgen was on him again. Elias raised an arm and the beast’s teeth found his forearm instead of his throat; he felt the grate of tooth against bone, scraping back and forth as the worgen worried him like a terrier trying to snap the neck of a small animal.

Everything was out of focus – the streetlamps just hazy orbs of light, the buildings dark walls and the sky a gloomy, distant ceiling. The only clarity in his short-sighted world was the worgen – every strand of its pale fur, thick as a bear’s; ropes of saliva streaming from its maw as it worried his arm to shreds; its red eyes, blazing like a beast’s but with the brutal intelligence only men could claim.

Elias kicked, but it might have been the feeble battering of a moth at a window. He groped at the cobbles with his free hand, hoping for a loose stone, but his fingers found a slim length of metal instead.

Everything was out of focus, expect for the worgen’s mad red eyes.

With a snarl fit to match the worgen’s, Elias drove the scalpel into its eye. As it reared back, Elias followed it up, putting all his weight behind that thin sliver of sharpened metal. It grated against bone, then sank an inch deeper, and the beast flailed wildly, tearing more furrows in his garb and the skin beneath – but they were death throes. Elias didn’t release his grip on the scalpel until the worgen sank unmoving to the cobbles, until the blood stopped pulsing from the bullet wound between its ribs, until the frightened townsfolk finally braved to step outside their homes and pull him from atop the corpse.

In the distance, the baying of dogs was joined by the chorus of wolves.


End file.
